Musings
by C-Bear
Summary: A couple of drabblevignettes about Luke and Grace.


A few short bits that I eventually want to turn into real fics, but still stand alone well as simple scenes. As allows, feedback appreciated.

**Grace Dreams**

Grace dreams. She has hopes and wishes for futures she doubts are possible. She looks at pictures of herself as a child, that silent, angry little girl who glares at the camera, forced to stand still. She sees the sadness in a twelve year old kid, already too grown-up, already closed off and cold. But not cold, not really. Cold is coverup, protection against being hurt, against the laughter.

Grace looks at the girl in the picture with the buttery blond hair and the sharp chin and the guarded face and wants to comfort her, wants to give her the hugs and pets that she never got. This freaks her out a bit, Grace doesn't comfort, even herself.

But maybe she wants to. Maybe deep inside somewhere there is a Grace who can give and receive love freely, but she has been buried for her own protection. Maybe somewhere there is a Grace who dreams someday of a family, a daughter of her own whom she can give all things she never had, a tight, interwoven group like the Girardis who sit around a dinner table where there is warmth and laughter, not silence and accusation.

But this won't ever happen, so it's best not to dream it. Grace isn't that girl because that girl is loveable. That girl likes to smile and doesn't think too hard or feel too much. That girl doesn't rail against the injustices. This isn't an act; this is who she is. And why should she have to change for the sake of some repressive, patriarchal society?

She likes her leather jacket. She likes her big, black boots. She likes her clothes that are comfortable. Her hair is short because it's easy to deal with, she doesn't have to spend time on it when there is so little time for herself these days.

Sometimes she lies in her bed at night, the heat closing in, her thoughts and emotions filling her up inside till her skin is too tight, stretched too thinly. She wants to beg the world to let her be, let her live as she will, but she is too proud to beg. Instead, she chooses anger. Anger is easier to deal with and to understand than disappointment.

**Epiphany**

Her skin is soft. Much softer than he would have though, before he'd touched it. Why was girls' skin softer than boys'? Joan's skin was always so soft, too. Then, again, that concluded his frame of reference and thinking about the texture of his sister's skin in the same breath as his girlfriend's seemed a little, well… gross.

She never let him hold her hand, but during their five minutes in the morning, he usually got around that. They were always something of a surprise to him, her hands. Much smaller than they should be. Then again, so was she. Her persona occupied so great a magnetic field, her actual corporeal body seemed so very slight in comparison. It wasn't until they were in the closet, toes touching, when he again realized her head barely reached his shoulder, that her shoulders were narrower than his own.

Now that it was warm again, the Jacket, as he'd come to think of it, made fewer and fewer appearances and she even wore t-shirts with necklines that bared her collarbone. He liked to rub his thumb over it when they kissed. It was a sharp bone, and so very delicate, as though if he pushed too hard it would snap. It was a strange sort of juxtaposition- Grace and delicate. She would hurt him if she ever read his mind. Luckily, that phenomenon still lived only in the realm of science fiction.

**Physics gets physical**

He thought about her. Constantly. Obsessively, Friedman claimed. As though he were one to judge. He still had a dog-eared copy of Hamlet in the middle compartment of his backpack. But those were sad thoughts, and Luke didn't want to feel sad today. And so he thought of her. Of how sometimes, when she thought he was too wrapped up in his own head, she watched him. She had done it today, during their physics exam.

He'd finished early, before Glynis and Friedman, even. _Score one for Girardi!_ he cheered silently. With nearly half an hour remaining in the period, he'd pulled out his ideas notebook and began brainstorming hypotheses for his summer experiments. This summer, they needed to be truly remarkable, as they would be the ones he submitted for his applications to MIT.

No one knew about that, yet. He'd been very careful to talk to the college advisor when his mother had been off at a staff luncheon with Price and several other teachers. She couldn't be told, not until everything was in motion.

Helen Giardi had a way of sweetly agreeing with everything you said until it suddenly sounded like the stupidest idea ever. when he was seven and tried to run away, she had helped him pack, agreeing with on the unfairness of bedtime being based on chronological age, rather than actual maturity. The fact that Kevin, who still believed in Santa at age 11 and couldn't spell triskadekaphobia was allowed to stay up until 9, while he went to bed at 8:00, was simply not to be tolerated. she had never once naysaid him, yet twenty minutes later, she kissed the top of his head and went back to doing laundry, while he happily unpacked his bag and went to take a bath.

Ten years later and she still had the ability to completely turn him around without him knowing how.

And he was not willing to negotiate in this. When they'd offered him the chance to skip from sixth to eighth grade, Helen had said no. She claimed he wasn't emotionally mature enough and Will was afraid he'd get beaten up, seeing as most of thefifth graders were heavier than him. So he had fumed and written countless letters to attornies asking for emancipation due to "unbearble living conditions", but apparently having to share a bedroom with his older brother and never getting the last Poptart didn't qualify as litigious validities. He was mature enough to understand his parents' reasoning then, but now?Things were different.

So he would graduate a year early and go to college with her. She didn't know. She wouldn't know until it was too late. She'd yell and threaten and possibly even ignore him. But she'd get over it. He'd noticed the applications during one of his brief forays into her room. Boston University and Columbia. He could work with those. And so he plotted, secretly, and imagined a future.

He had been staring out the window for a full five minutes when he realized he could see her reflection behind him. She was watching him, a very slight, very odd smile on her face. He wondered what she was thinking and what that smile meant. When she smiled like that in the biology closet, it meant- Luke started and accidently hit his pile of books, sending them crashing to the floor. Luckily the bell rang then, though he supposed embarrassment might also sufficiently explain the sudden redness of his face.

"Smooth, Geek, real smooth," Grace said softly as she walked past. Luke jumped again. Was it his imagination or did she really just trail her hand over his ass? He shook his head and hoisted his backpack onto his shoulder. Hopefully there was enough time to make a stop in the mensroom.


End file.
